At the end of every year I always spend some time considering what my aims were at the beginning of the year, both professionally and personally, and to what degree I have achieved them. In doing this I tend to make a list of the highs and lows of the year and how they came about. Reflecting on 2009, my overwhelming feeling is gratitude at having had such a successful year particularly when the economic climate was so tough.

I know that many competitors have struggled but I found that the recession actually created business for us. Looking to concentrate on their core skills, some customers came to us, outsourcing for the first time. For others, market conditions made them decide to invest more in developing new products and infrastructure to ensure they were ready for the up-turn and this led them to outsource with us. This resulted in an expansion of the company. We hired another 30 more developers and by the end of the year our staff was 90% bigger than two years ago. All this meant growth continued apace for us, in line with plans made prior to the recession. Our growth for 2010 will be backed up by some EU funding.

Earlier in 2009 I applied for funding for investments in the business and recently heard that I was successful. This means that in 2010 we will be able to build new offices for ourselves and improve our technical infrastructure ensuring that continued growth will be fully supported. This gives me the confidence to feel optimistic about the new year. My forecasts are for greater growth than this year and I feel sure that Future Processing will be able to achieve it. You may wonder why it is gratitude I feel at the success of Future Processing.

Well, I am acutely aware of how dependent we all are on others. My company wouldn’t have been able to achieve even half of its success without the hard work, good judgement, dedication and good humour of my colleagues. I guess I am grateful to them for helping make it all happen.